Brendan Scarano

Software Engineer

Web Developer

March 25, 2014

Why Dev Bootcamp?

I’ve had the desire to learn how to program on a professional level since I first left college. I had first been exposed to ‘code’, and ‘programming’ in one of my Information Systems classes and really enjoyed it. We were writing basic programs such as a lottery machine that generated random winning numbers, a forum to iterate through a baseball roster, and some other smaller programs that really caught my interest. It was, at the time, the most work I had done for a class, however I truly enjoyed not just memorizing some terms and regurgitating them on an exam, but building a product I could see and tinker with. However, I never considered this be a career opportunity as I was too busy focusing my current major and finding an internship.

Once I graduated I began becoming more and more fascinated with the idea of programming, and wanted to incorporate it into my daily work. At the time I was automating the production of several reports and was able to write some very basic macros in excel to decrease production time but nothing too powerful.

During my free time I began going through Code Academy classes but honestly didn't have the push I needed to really understand it… to fill my desire for more education I began applying to graduate school to pursue a MBA in Information Systems as I felt this was the closest I could get to the tech industry, and learning to program on some level. I eventually got accepted into CUNY Baruch.

After my first semester at Baruch (Spring'13) I knew this was not what I wanted to pursue at this time in my life so I decided to pivot my education.

That summer I decided I was going to finally take learning how to program seriously and started applying to universities on Long Island for any CS classes I could possibly get into for the Fall of 2013.

Stony Brook turned me down, as I would be a second-degree student (ie: I already have a Bachelors), Queens and Nassau Community College accepted me into a Computer Science 101 class. I figured this was going to take some time but it I was willing to do whatever was necessary and beginning a class would give me the push I needed to begin learning.

Around the same time I was due to turn in my tuition, I was offered a new job with one of the clients I had been working with at the time, Foot Locker. While I was not specifically looking for anything new, I considered this a great career opportunity, and more realistic than going class by class to learn how to program on a professional level.

After a few months at Foot Locker I stumbled upon Dev Bootcamp and instantly knew this is what I had been looking for over the past 2 years. I researched DBC, along with several other bootcamps and read up as much as I possibly could on them, and their reputations. I decided to only apply to DBC for the first NYC cohort.

After filling out some short essays, and making an instructional ‘how-to’ video my application was completed. I was contacted about a week later to schedule an interview time that would require me to pass some technical challenges as well the standard interview procedure.

I prepped for my interview, and after completing it held my breath for the next email to come into my mailbox. Eventually it arrived with the headline – Congratulations! (phew)

So after years of repressing a skill I truly wanted to learn, I am now 12 weeks into Phase0 of DBC, with 4 days remaining until the program picks up full time. I cannot wait for it to begin.